The Road to ChumpcarThe home of "Apex of Failure" a crap-can racing team.

Now that the car is mostly stripped down it’s time to build it back up. The majority of the work we need to do to get this car ready to race is in safety gear. Our big push right now is to get the roll cage in. In order to get that installed correctly we need to make sure it fits well around the driver. All that means that we need to get the seat, seat belts, steering wheel, and window net sorted out. Here is a list of what we have invested in now (there will be a lot more later):

The seat – It is a critical part of safety that protects the driver. It holds the driver in the car so they can spend his time controlling the car (instead of bracing them selves against something). It also has to be comfortable enough that someone can sit in it for 2 hours without discomfort. Unfortunately seats tend to be something that comes down to personal preference. We have to support a wide range of driver sizes and shapes. We decided to go with an aluminum seat. The thought was that the padding is easily removable and if we had to accommodate a smaller or larger driver we could modify the pads. I’m not sure how well that will pan out, hopefully we can find a “one size fits most”. Ultrashield seems to have a bit better value than Kirkey and the reviews we found online seem positive.   We ordered an Ultrashield Road Race VS 17″ 20degree layback in black.  Seat mounting is unresolved right now.  We are pretty sure we will need sliders to fit all our drivers properly.  We are hoping to find a way to make the stock sliders work.  For safety, we also have to make sure the sliders latch on both sides (not sure yet if the stock ones do that).  The back of the seat also needs a brace.  We found a great quick adjust unit from IO port that is on its way to us now.

Harness - Regulations require you get a 5 point or better harness.  Ultrashield had a great price so we ordered one with the seat as well.  All five of the belts connect in the center unit.  A quick twist of the center unit and all five pop out.  Easier to use than the “latch and link” style buckle.

Window Net – The window net holds your arms in the car when your car rolls.  Keeps all your digits intact.  ChumpCar requires one, Lemons does not.  It’s a great safety thing to have and we want to run both series so it’s a no brainer.  There is a thread over on chumpcar about recommendations. We went with their recommendation of the IO port unit.

Mirror – Stock rear view mirrors are great for freeway driving but they have blind spots.  There are several brands of “racing” mirror that help to give you a complete view around the car.  Again we went with the IO port option.  It has a nice roll bar mount and is a single piece.

HANS Device – This is an important piece of modern safety gear.  It links to the side of your helmet and is strapped under your seat belts.  It prevents your head from whipping forward in a crash.  It moves with your body and not your seat.  It still allows a good amount of movement but it does take some getting used to.  The version I’m used to using has fixed tethers.  It prevents you from turning your head left and right.  You really have to learn to depend on your mirrors.  We got the entry level unit (Sport Series) with a 20degree slope (to make the seats).  The “post anchor” shown in this picture allows it to be easily attached and detached between helmets.  This will allow us to share one unit between all our drivers.  Each driver has to buy the “posts” to attach to their helmet ($50-60 each set).  Even the entry level unit here set us back almost $700.  Really though, isn’t your neck worth $700?  There are theories out there that had Earnhardt Sr. been wearing one it would have saved his life.  Lemons and Chumpcar both require some kind of restraint device but they will accept “donut” foam rings which offer far less protection (some even argue that they do nothing).

For our Tuesday work session we removed the exhaust, gas tank, replaced the fuel hoses (tank-side), odds and ends interior-wise, replaced the wheels with the snow tires in favor of the rubber the white parts car had equipped, removed th awkward metal shrouds surrounding the strut perches and finsihed removing the power steering.  Not bad for a couple of hours.  So far, we’re still tackling the easy stuff, we are all quite aware that the challenging stuff is what truly lies ahead of us.   I might have to be absent those days.

We want to make it clear, right from the get-go, we are a green race team.

That’s right. We are Type-R’ing this beast out.  We are too good for side moldings.  Too fast is more like it. Real fast.

We are fortunate to have such a straight body. Not a scratch on it.

…Ya…

Champiros! This is a step up for us!

I didn’t take any clear photos of the de-flowered interior since the last stint of work. We havn’t truly cleaned it, but this is an rx-7 interior without sound deadening.  Should be a hit with the girls.

A bit of funky corrosion on the exterior of the tank, but the real treat was resting INSIDE.  a couple inches of green sludge welcomed us. The white car’s gas tank is in much better shape, we will be starting with that one instead.

Rob went to work on finishing off the power steering pump. We are making efforts to simplifying the setup. Though, I am not sure we can call what we have a “setup” just yet.  More like the result of removing lots of junk, we have arrived at this outcome.

Nick, with his handy angle grinder decapitated the strut crowns, or whatever their official name may be.  Crowns. Ya, I like that.

Ya! REAL man stuff. Rarrr.

Now isn’t that a lot better?  That servo on the top of the shock piston is what controls the adjustable shocks.  This, ofcourse, will be going into the sale heap.

More to come.

We accomplished a lot of our tasks on the way to prepping for the cage and seat.  We were able to finish up the sound deadening after mother nature did her worst to the adhesive bonding the heavy stuff to the chassis.  A couple freezing nights in single digit temperatures made the job so much easier.  Along with the sound deadening we removed the rear hatch and front windshield, remove the remaining pieces of the dash, heater core, steering wheel, removed the radiator, ac components, power steering, sun roof, photo’d all of the junk we want to sell and gutted the doors.

We started bright and early. 11am.

The cold temps outside did it’s job beautifully on the adhesive bonding the sound insulation to the floor pan.  We beat on it with a hammer and it separated cleanly from the body.  The seam sealer is always a bit of a problem though. A thin screw driver or pry bar does the trick when the blunt hammer had none.

All the sound deadening removed on the back deck. It felt very satisfying to have it be such a clean job. I have removed sound deadening on other cars before, and this was the easiest without the use of dry ice.

This is what the interior in the front section of the cabin looked like at the beginning of the day. By the end of our little work day, it was barren.

There was a mild case of rust rash in food well.  Grinder, spray paint, bam!

Prepping for windshield removal.

I am inside chipping away at sound insulation.  Leo is… doing something.

Nick removing the power steering lines to the PS pump.

AC condenser on the left was removed in one piece, and hopefully, will be enjoyed by another rx7 owner somewhere.

Nick doin’ work on the door skin. It wasn’t long before they were both done.  It took longer to remove the windows and motors.

Inner door skin removed, it’s ready for door bars.  The guys are considering whether to go the whole nine and take out the support still remaining in the door.

Another successful day.

Ghost edit from leo:

We might need some suspension work…

Just finished up one of our regular Tuesday after work sessions.  Rob and Nick came over and we got started.  This is the first real work the gray car has had.  We are mainly focused now on getting ready for the cage.  We got all the cloth, interior, and the doors off.  Not bad for under 3 hours work.

Sure is nice to not have doors in the way.

Still lots to do here.

Freaking dash.  I spent an hour working on the passenger side and then nick came over and said, ohh you just do these two bolts and it will come right out.  *Face Palm*  Signs point to mold danger so its good that we got started on this.

All tucked in for the night!  That’s doubled over.  I may have gotten a slightly too large of a tarp.

The parts are really really starting to pile up.  We haven’t even really started on the engine bay.  We need to start getting this stuff sold.

No real problems found.  Nick found some questionably connected electronics and I found a receipt from a tire store dated 2001.  The inspection marked leaking dampers on the front and rear passenger side.  No repair was on the receipt, I doubt it was fixed.  Looks like we will have to use our “spare” dampers right away.

A great head start for the big work session on sunday.

Several of our debates rage on.  What seat are we going to get?  Do we have a final decision on the cage?  Heater core or no heater core?

A deal popped up on rx7club that seemed good for the team.  One of the forum members up in Seattle had a White 1987 GXL RX7 (same year and model!) that they were parting out.  I was originally just shopping for an alternator but it looked like he was getting rid of a whole car.  For the right price, we really needed spare parts of everything.  Lots of things can and do break during a 24 hour race.  While racing with FreeRange we have been lucky enough not to need them (knocks on wood) but we have saved the race of more than one FX16/MR2 team who needed parts.  This is high on my list of “good things I learned from other teams”.  With the intent of keeping nearly everything off this car I was able to negociate a price of $400 for the car and all the parts.  This included an aftermarket strut tower bar, exhaust, wheel, and short throw shifter.  Upgrades!

The car had been in a collision with a semi (side swiped, hit and run too.  Everyone was ok).  Nearly every body panel on the car was bad.  The good news was that it was driving fine less than a year ago and had spent that entire time wrapped up in a giant tarp under a car port.

I joined forces with a friend of mine who just happened to be taking an Audi up to Seattle to sell (the same weekend too).  Towed the Audi up and brought the RX7 back.

On 11/15/09 we started work dismantling the car.  This was our first major work day for the team.  All hands were on deck!  Max, Ben, Rob, and Nick all came down to get it torn down.  No real major drama here.  We managed to get nearly everything off in one day.  The pictures will speak for them selves.

We found a complete set of these sockets hidden away in the back storage bins.  Bonus!

Day 1 finished with a short list of things left to do.  Front subframe, gas tank, rest of the carpets, heater core, head lights, and engine accessories.  Less than 2 weeks later Gabe came over and we finished it up.

Rob works with a couple guys who offered to take the shell off our hands for the scrap metal money.  Not wanting to deal with it we got them involved.  I’m not sure they have done this much.  A late night a couple days later, they came equipped with a saws-all and a toyota pickup.  They eventually gave up cutting it in half and found a way to get it out…   Apparently he even drove to work with it like this a couple days later.

Now we have a large pile of parts to sell and parts to keep.  We should now have every part we need (and plus some!) to get our car running.

I received an e-mail one day from a friend of mine offering a free RX7.  Free car you say, what a deal.  Well rx7 enthusiasts don’t always have this reaction.  These cars are notorious for having blown engines (a design “quirk” of the wankel rotary engine) and being money pits.  Many cars have popped their motors and have been left to rot in black berry bushes.  This leads to rust, mold, and rodents.  A free rx7 always ends up costing you something.

For our purposes these kinds of typical problems wouldn’t really matter that much.  We were going to strip everything off.  Many of the creature comfort systems (like uhh, the windows) would be removed.  We needed a big hunk of metal to put an engine in and connect to some wheels.

I took my friend up on his offer and when to checkout what would undoubtedly become my second job for the next year.  This is what I was greeted with.

Way better than what I was expecting.  Look, the paint is even shiny.  The car was 100% complete.  Clean title.  Keys.  Spare snow tires (it already had snow tires on it, lol)!  130k on the clock.

Here is the story that I got.  A woman owned this car and loved it.  She was either the first or second owner, I can’t remember.  After over a decade of service, it had developed some kind of serious problem.  At that point (some time in 2002) she purchased a nice Toyota and this car was parked.  There is stayed under a tree.  There is good evidence (broken windshield, half the car literally covered in small dings) that some punk kid had used it has his rock throwing target (is this what red necks do before they are old enough for their own “shootin’ car”?).  Earlier this year, my friend was offered this car if he would come pick it up (Grants Pass, OR if I remember correctly).  He confirmed it was a 5 lug (5 bolts on the wheel, the more desirable form of this car) and brought it back.

(Pictured here, Rob, one of our teams principals, aiding with the loading of the vehicle).

It was then brought back to yet another tree to sit under.  Three weeks later we started work.  The mean goal was to try to figure out what was wrong.  Was the engine completely shot?  Could we get it to start?  What are the major areas of repair we would have to deal with?

RX7′s have crazy spark plugs.  Turns out this car uses the exact same plugs as my 93 twin turbo.  I grabbed a set of used plugs from by car and put them in.  Pictured are what came out of the car.  Relatively uniform, thats a good sign.  We also created a gheto siphon system with a garden hose to suck some of the presumably bad (sitting for 7 years) gas.  It was mt dew colored.  Nasty.

With fresh plugs and gas we hooked it up to some jumper cables and gave it a shot.  It would turn over but no combustion.  A plug was removed and observed while we cranked.  We were definately getting spark so are problem is probably fuel.  To confirm the diagnosis we opened up the air box (slightly damaged, we will need to do something about that.  This is a easy place to modify for simplicity and power anyway) and sprayed starter fluid (to act as a fuel source) right in.  After a couple tries we were able to get some combustion but only as long as we were spraying fuel in.  We weren’t getting fuel delivery.  The fuel filter was try and there was no pressure in the lines.

Fuel pump.  We checked wiring and we were definitely seeing some voltage.  Something had to be wrong with the pump.

See the rubber insulator mounting at the bottom of the pump?  That had been dissolved to the point that it acted like silly putty.  When turned over a nasty brown fluid came out the top.  This pump was shot.  Rob had a walbro 255 sitting around (for a 240sx but we could make it fit for testing).  I wired it up and got it in the tank.

She fired right up and purred.  No overheating (at idle).  No strange noises.  Would rev all the way to red line.

Known issues at this time:

Alternator – Belt was broken and sitting in the back hatch.  Would not freely rotate by hand, probably why the belt was broken and sitting in the back hatch.  Needs to be replaced.

Belts/Fluids/Battery/Normal Maintenance – I’m surprised running this engine at all didn’t break the rest of the belts.  They are in horrible condition.  I’m sure everything needs to be done to this.  Battery is of course shot.

Electronics -Radio doesn’t work (don’t care).  Power windows are definitely showing there age, the motors are almost shot.  Same thing with the sun roof (why did we even try to open that?).  Most of this doesn’t matter.  I just hope it isn’t a bad sign for the things we want.  Electric door locks don’t seem to do anything on the driver’s side.  Neither does the manual nob (key works though).

Clutch- Clutch pedal is sitting on the floor.  Seems to be a hydraulics problem.  This coupled with the bad battery means we couldn’t move this car under it’s own power.

Windshield – The only glass we actually want in the car is broken.  We will need to find one of these.

That work was done in early August and that is the way it has sat until now.  It’s been relocated yet again, to my house.  My garage is going to serve as team head quarters for now.

Next up?  Completely strip the interior, remove the sound deadening, skin the doors (remove all the glass and metal supports so its just a piece of decorative sheet metal) and get ready for the roll cage!